JUGGLE-BANDHI

Woe, begone

Jug Suraiya, 11 March 2010, 08:57 PM IST

Jugular Vein Do you think you're smarter, more good looking, better at your job, and make a much nicer pizza than your neighbours, so there? Of course you think so. And so you should. In exactly the same way as your neighbours think of you: that they are much smarter, more good looking, better at their jobs, and make a much nicer pizza than you, so there. Can both you and your neighbours be right? Is that possible? Certainly. It's what John J Cannell, an American physician, calls the Lake Wobegon Effect, a name borrowed from a Garrison Keillor novel which starts with the words "Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." Cannell discovered that all the states in America lodged school test scores which were above the national average, which is like saying that all of us are taller than each other: it is a statistical paradox. But a win-win situation for all.

What explains the Wobegon Effect? Simple. A correspondent pointed out that you can turn Wobegon into Woe-begone. In other words, don't woe-ry, be happy. Rather than let an underestimation of yourself overwhelm you, let an overestimation of yourself underwhelm your lack of self-esteem. It works. And India is as fine an example as any place in the world to prove it.

Indians - all Indians - know that they are in all respects superior not only to those unfortunate beings called foreigners, but also that they are superior to all other Indians. Bengalis, for example, know that they are superior to everyone else. How do they know this? The answer is obvious. Who were the three greatest people who ever lived? Rabindranath Tagore, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, and Satyajit Ray, of course. And what did these three have in common, apart from their greatness? That's right: they were all Bengalis. QED. Bongs are the uber kind of the human species.

If Bengalis pride themselves on being een-tah-lek-chual (intellectual), Punjabis know that brain is a misspelling of brawn and that one good thump on the back from a stalwart son - or daughter, come to that - of the Land of the Five Rivers will turn any intellectual into an outellectual before you can say bhangra rap. It's wrong to say that the only culture that Punjabis know is agriculture. They're dab hands at aggro-culture too.

Marwaris and Gujaratis are not interested in such comparisons. The only interest they believe in is compound interest, preferably at 18 per cent per annum. Per annum. Arre, su tamay kayvo chho, what are you saying? Didn't you read the fine print which says it's 18 per cent per day. Compounded, of koss.

The Tam-Bram doesn't credit such verbal exchanges. The Tam-Brams don't credit words of any kind. In keeping with the legacy of the greatest mathematician in the world, Ramanujan, Tam-Brams communicate with each other purely through the recitation of logarithmic tables, indispensable for calculating rahu-kalam, not to mention the messing charge for tiffin for two in a military hotel on Mount Road. Don't get the reference? Naturally not. You won't unless you're a Tam-Bram: it's a logarithm.

Malayalees don't have time for such petty matters. Or rather, they have too much time to bother about such trifles. Why do they have too much - or rather, two much - time? Because they wear two watches, one on each wrist. One tells Indian Standard Time and the other tells Dubai time, and shows, along with the Bahrain Baroque villa they've built in Kozhikode, that they're Gulf-returned.

So if you're an Indian from any part of India, relax. The Wobegon Effect is in your favour. And if you have any doubts on this score, all you have to do is read this column. It'll immediately make you feel agreeably superior to its writer. With whom, if not the buck, the woe needs must stop.

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Jitesh says:

March 11,2010 at 09:49 PM IST

Very nice article and well written. The last paragraph did the trick and was a grosser. Just as I was about to say....'gosh...I could write a better blog...you made me think of the Woe-begon' effect.

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